Genesis
by NightmareThunderSocks
Summary: Really eventual Daryl/OC romance following the lives of the Atlanta survivors. M for safety.


**HI :D Just a quick note to say thanks for reading my story, all feedback is welcome good or bad. This is going to be a horrendously eventual Daryl/OC romance and when I say eventual I mean eventual. I own nothing in the Walking Dead universe apart from Elena, she is mine and mine only :)**

Atlanta was gone.

Elena stood on the bridge, shaking hands cupped over her mouth, stifling the wail of horror that was threatening to escape. She dropped to her knees and braced her hands in front of herself, sobs racking through her body, hot tears dripping down onto the road in front of her.

Atlanta was gone

Her sobs transformed into keening wails and she found herself not only crying for her failed plan but also for her family, her friends, everyone who had suffered at the hands of this fucked up virus. Nothing will ever be the same again, she thought, accepting that she was very much alone and that nobody was coming to save her. Elena cursed herself for being stupid enough to think that she would find salvation, find the safe refuge she was sure would be in Atlanta. There was nothing safe about the burned wreck of a city that stood in front of her, no huge walls lined with armed guards who welcomed her like an old friend with a bed and food.

Pulling herself off the floor, Elena shook out her legs and arms, cracked her neck and slapped the sides of her cheeks a few times. She had got it out of her system, the mild breakdown was a thing of the past and the only way to move now was forward. Putting one foot in front of the other was an easy, instinctual task that allowed her to focus on something other than her grief. She knew she was almost certainly walking towards her death, but the only plan she had was Atlanta and she was sure as hell going to stick to it until the last breath left her body and she rose like one of them.

There were Biter's ahead, around 4 of them, but she was sure there were more milling around the cars behind. They lumbered dumbly into each other, clearly not picking up her scent from this far away. Elena stopped, crouched low behind a car and began thinking of her options.

_You can't fight them_, she told herself, _no matter how much you want to run headfirst into them and slash and kick and punch away your anger you can't be stupid._ She edged closer, darting from car to car as silent as her heavy work boots allowed. Crouched behind the passenger door of an RV, Elena's eyes fell onto a rotting corpse not 10 feet away, it's legs trapped under the back wheels of a minivan. It snapped its teeth and gurgled a moan, making barely any sound as its entire torso and windpipe lay on the floor around it. Unsheathing her hunting knife from the holster on her hip, Elena drove the knife deep into its temple and ending its miserable second life for good.

As the smell of the corpse began to make her stomach turn, a very bad idea sprung to the forefront of the tall woman's mind. She bared her teeth in a twisted grin and muttered to herself, "if you can't stab your knife through their brains, join 'em". Barking a laugh she soon regretted, Elena reached a hand into the gore of the corpse and smothered her bare arms with blood and guts. She whimpered softly as she spread it over her collarbone and neck, finally wiping it on her cheeks and forehead. Unhappy with the fact that her human smell wasn't suitably concealed, she shrugged and lay down on her back. Rolling herself through the organs and decaying flesh made Elena gag and wretch but it was the only way she could make this plan work.

Standing up, she wiped what was left on her hands over her head and through her ponytail. She knew she looked and smelt disgusting but it was the best bet she could think of to get through the herd of Biters- which has now increased to about 10. With a shuffling gait that almost seemed comical, Elena staggered forward, reminiscent of an actor in a bad 80's Zombie flick. To her horror, the Biters stopped and smelt the air, but she kept going, slightly faster and more urgent. She was parallel with them now but they continued to smell the air like the stupid animals they were.

_10 steps to the end of the bridge_, she thought with glee and as her foot crossed the finish line she breathed a sigh of relief. Looking back behind her, Elena noted that the Biters had continued milling about, absolutely none the wiser to the fact that a living human had staggered past them in an almost slapstick impression of themselves. Elena wiped her face with a clean patch of her tank top and grimaced when the clean patch came back covered in blood and small lumps of gore.

'God I'm fucking disgusting,' she whined, running her fingers through her damp and matted ponytail.

Setting off again, Elena risked a glance in a car window and almost didn't recognise herself when she saw the strange girl staring back. At 21 years old, she had always considered herself to be a woman that prided herself on her appearance, but this gaunt, sickly looking girl was not how she expected herself to look. At 5'8, Elena wasn't a short girl, but her usually lithe and graceful stature had been replaced by a shrunken and frail body which made her look years older than she was. It didn't help that she was covered head to toe in the blood of a Biter.

Shaking her head sadly, she continued her walk into the desolate city, staying close to the walls of the buildings, she moved as quiet as a cat. Rounding the corner, her eyes were drawn to the sign of a grocery store and she trotted across the road to its door, ignoring the fact that she could have drawn the interest of the undead. Unsheathing her knife, the dark haired woman banged hard on the front window three times and after a minute or two was happy to enter the store.

The door swung open on its hinges easily, too easily, like it had been used recently, and that unnerved her. Her footsteps seemed way too loud on the linoleum floor but she continued on regardless, rounding the corner of the canned goods aisle eagerly when she saw they were still partially stocked. Elena swung the rucksack off her tired shoulder and unzipped it, the sound loud and echoey in the empty store. Placing a few cans in there before moving on, Elena made a beeline for the huge bin containing bottled water. She grabbed one of the bottles and drank deeply, using the last half of it to tip on her arms to wash the gore off. She smiled slightly when she began to see the pale translucent colour of her skin instead of the red and brown that was there before.

Her quick shower session was cut short when she heard a yelp, a very human, very real yelp. Elena's revolver was in her hands and pointed in front of her before her brain even had time to register what the noise was and where it came from. She dropped into an aggressive crouch and stalked forwards, rounding the corner and stopping short when she was what was on the floor at her feet.

'Shit... Oh fuck... Don't shoot me' he panted, pulling his knife out of the skull of the Biter that was on top of him, 'I'm Glenn, once again please don't shoot me.'


End file.
